News You Can't Use: Standing Desks May Lead to Back Pain, Brain Drain

Sitting is bad. It's the new smoking, it compresses the spine, damages your organs and is a convenient scapegoat for your cold and distant relationships with your fellow work units. Standing is also bad, wrecking the joints, causing the footsore and leading to painful "I'm jelling" conversations. If there is  a posture that doesn't destroy our rapidly dying mortal shell we're still looking. Right now the most promising candidates are sobbing in a fetal ball and standing on one leg. The client is losing billions a second over this, we better solve it fast.

Standing desks, compared to conventional office seating, have been lauded for easing back pain, boosting alertness and helping people to lose weight.

I was alerted to all threats in the immediate proximity and lost ten pounds and several inches thanks to the exciting new "bank teller" exercise program.  

But new research suggests that using standing desks may actually not be as good for you as previously believed.  

Ugh, what part of "the science is settled" don't you eggheads understand?

A small but provocative study suggests that standing at a desk for a prolonged period of time can lead to “significant” discomfort and mental sluggishness.

Well, it definitely isn't comfortable, I'm not sure if we really needed a study, even a small one (It was cold, okay?) to confirm this. On the other hand, there's the decreased brain activity, which certainly explains all the bad decisions made by standing individuals in recorded history.

That’s what researchers at Curtin University in Australia found when they studied 20 adult subjects who undertook two hours of laboratory-based standing computer work.

Another Curtin University snob.

“Over time, discomfort increased in all body areas,” they wrote in the journal Ergonomics. “Sustained attention reaction time deteriorated,” they added, but “creative problem solving improved.”

My ability to talk my way out of this goofy "experiment" got much better as we entered the second hour, let me tell you.

The bottom line, researchers noted, is that “prolonged standing should be undertaken with caution.”

Stand up at your own risk, monkey-man.

Your screen ain't even on, bro.

The advice backs up a 2016 report in which adverse effects of standing were found to include “an increase in back pain or varicose veins or being more tired at the end of the day.”

We have scientifically quantified how "tired" or "Grumpy Gus" the subjects were.

Professor Alan Taylor, a physiotherapy expert at Nottingham University in England, told the Telegraph that standing desks are “not a panacea ....” And whether you sit or stand at your job, be sure to make time for a walk.

Next week: study links walking to heart failure, uncontrollable falling down syndrome and low energy.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here. 

News You Can't Use: Domino’s Staff Member Forced to Kneel as a Gun is Pointed at his Head

Ordering cultural appropriation versions of Italian cuisine can easily turn into a total and complete disaster so it's probably not a surprise that every so often there's blow-back from the endlessly put-upon martyrs who just wanted a reasonably cheap and warm carb-load in a box left outside the front door. It's even less surprising when this sudden reversal takes place in a Southern Hemisphere penal colony. Yes, let's head Down Under to meet a man who was pushed too far by the whole "thirty minutes or less" trick bag and decided to perform a deleted scene from "Falling Down" on a wage slave.

Chilling footage of the moment a man pointed a shortened firearm in the face of a Domino’s Pizza Smithfield staff member has been released.

Chilling, just like the ice-cold pizza that came three hours after I ordered it. Seriously, I was wronged and my complaints are legitimate, how come no one cares?

Philip Raymond Willich was angry. He had been unable to get a discount when ordering his pizza on the phone.

Some smooth-talker told me I could get a deep discount if I mentioned my affiliation with the Professional Domino Player League, but it turned out to be a shuck.

So he went to the shop to confront the young staff member Isaac Ramsay, and asked him to step outside for a chat on October 21, 2015. 

Protip: When a confrontational yabbo wants to "chat" outside you should refuse.

Police Prosecutor Senior Sergeant Lisa Buchanan said Willich, 53, had wanted an apology.

I could have just said "sorry" and deescalated everything, but my fanatical loyalty to a place that produces something that tastes like a spicy rubber tire demanded I refuse.

When it wasn’t forthcoming he drew the weapon, which had been concealed under his clothes, and pointed it at Mr Ramsay’s head.

Looks like you're really going to earn that minimum wage today.

“It is the most serious common assault I have seen to obtain an apology for not getting a discount on a takeaway pizza,” Snr Sgt Buchanan said.

Yes. This was the worst version of that highly specific scenario I've ever seen.

“It wasn’t loaded but the victim wasn’t aware of that.” 

That's not a gun. THIS is a gun.

Snr Sgt Buchanan said Mr Ramsay was effectively “begging for his life”.

No apologies, though. I'd rather die than express regret that you didn't get a reduced price from my distant and faceless employer.

Under Queensland law, Willich must spend at least 12 months in jail because of the weapons charge.
 
It only took about two years to finally reach this conclusion. Now to start planning the cruel and unusual punishment.

Defence solicitor Paul Richardson handed up two comprehensive reports about his client, which described Willich has having narcissistic personality traits, high alcoholism and a depressive disorder.

I love myself so much, I'm profoundly depressed, time to drink lots of top-shelf booze.

 What do you mean this offer is expired? *pulls gun*

“The common assault was a very serious example of common assault,” Magistrate Alan Comans said, adding that they were also someone calculated.

This thing was an excellent example of this thing.

He committed the assault in the most menacing and frightening way.

As opposed to all those friendly and comforting assaults, I guess.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Man Robs Store Wearing Flower Pot as Disguise, Wielding Chainsaw

You come from a land down under. You tilt that bottle. You watch too many horror movies, are deeply involved in botany and are robbery-curious. Can these disparate details be combined into one of those rare moments when the banality of evil suddenly becomes the amazing originality of evil? The answer probably won't surprise you.

If there were awards for such things, an Australian teen would assuredly win the prize for most unique robbery attempt.

If there were awards for such things there would finally be something other than "most soda consumed" and "fastest decline" for U.S. Americans to shine out in, efforts of our friends on the bottom of the globe notwithstanding.

According to the Queensland Times, police were called to a local 7-Eleven store after reports that a chainsaw-wielding suspect, wearing a flowerpot on his head to disguise his identity, made a memorable attempt to rob the store.

We are all witnesses. We will never forget. A crazed, boozed up Aussie who was probably all "that's not a portable mechanical saw...THIS is a portable mechanical saw!" will live forever in the memories of all those he touched, threatened or tried to saw limbs off of.

The New South Wales Chainsaw Massacre, featuring Pot Head.

Workers at the convenience store say around 4:30 a.m. Monday the suspect, Steven Frank Steele, entered the store and began terrorizing them in an attempt to rob the place. 

"When you work this sort of job you expect to be terrorized and get pretty jaded toward it."

They say Steele "lunged at them" with the chainsaw and then attacked several display racks and a window while demanding money.

No, not the display of hangover cures, artificial marijuana and assorted uppers and downers!

Police say things got even more bizarre when Steele dropped his pants "exposing his buttocks" to the shocked store employees.

PG-13 nudity = shocking. Chain saw attacks...eh, I've been through worse on the late shift.

Instead of handing over cash, the two employees fled to a back room to escape the chaos.

"I don't get paid enough to look at man ass! The threat of physical violence is bad, too. I guess."

Steele allegedly then gave up and left with only a bottle of soda.

"Well, better pull up those pants and grab a Coke."

Steele is charged with multiple crimes, including one count of armed robbery, two counts of willful damage, one count of public nuisance and with damaging a parked vehicle while fleeing the crime scene.

Leave it to the criminal justice system to ruin this "wacky" incident by getting all legalistic.

Investigators say Steele was drunk during the late-night rampage.

I blame those giant beer cans. 

Full Article. 

Shill Section

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read a free excerpt here.

His first novel The Foolchild Invention is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: You Can't Walk Straight While Texting, Study Confirms

I'm a walking dude. As such I'm pretty interested in exciting new developments in the field of upright mobility. Sadly, the best we're going to get is another "Texting is bad, stop it!" article to throw on the pile. Sorry guys, it's of vital importance that someone I barely even like gets that important "lol, wut a werld" update.

Texting can make you drive like a drunk. Now a new study shows that texting can also make you walk like a robot.

Robots, of course, are industrial devices used for dangerous and/or repetitive jobs that really don't "walk" at all. I applaud the author for trying to avoid another "zombie" reference, but that simile's utility is like a clock radio from 1973.

Researchers found that healthy people who read or send texts while hoofing it show subtle but potentially hazardous changes to their gait.

My healthy trot, ruined!

As pedestrians busily tap and flick, they swerve more, walk more slowly and move their heads, arms and torsos in a stiff, graceless fashion that makes them more prone to falling when confronted with an obstacle.

If we don't start closing the smooth moves gap this is creating we'll all lose out. We must restore the soulful strut.

Also, crashing into things is bad, I guess.

"Reading and texting on a phone influence your ability to walk, but the problems we see are much greater when you text than when you read,"

They're even greater when you drink, like, eight beers and put a sack over your head. Because we need to put everything on some type of continuum or it won't make sense.

Smartphone-wielding pedestrians have made the news and the upper ranks of YouTube by walking off piers, falling onto train tracks and blundering into fountains, but the accidents aren't always comic.

There's a difference between "comical misery" and "tragic misery." Off a pier or into tracks is funny, we are told.

In one high-profile incident, a 15-year-old girl in Maryland was hit by a car and killed in 2012 while looking at her phone, and a recent rise in U.S. pedestrian deaths in traffic accidents has been attributed partly to cellphone use.

We were all having a good healthy laugh at people falling into unforgiving steel rails and then some kill-joy is all "That ain't funny, man. Some jail bait on the east coast died like that."

Even though all 26 subjects were seasoned texters, spending an average of 30 minutes a day texting, they still couldn't walk normally as they texted.

They still couldn't spell words normally or preserve any dignity, either.

It's not entirely clear why the walk of a texting pedestrian is distorted.

Yeah, it's such an impenetrable mystery. Clearly a lot more tax-dollar funded research is needed.

Or perhaps the multitasking of walking while attending to a text overwhelms the brain, which then prioritizes that cool app over keeping to the straight and narrow.

Brain...overwhelmed...massive system failure...walking like robot...smooth moves lost...not a kool kat, not anymore...

Don't you mean "robots."

The study is "excellent," says Stony Brook University's Lisa Muratori, a behavioral neuroscientist who was not involved in the new research and who has also studied walking during cellphone use.

This study is just totally righteous, declared some unrelated individual with an impressive-sounding title with little, if any, practicality.

"In a healthy person it shouldn't cause a fall, necessarily, but a trip over a curb into a street is a big problem."

Do it in an empty pasture and you should be fine.

The increased head movement reported in the study "is a really bad thing for gait," says University of Pittsburgh bioengineer April Chambers, who was not involved in the research.

Thank you for adding no new information and having a name better suited to "adult" entertainment.

Full Article.

Komment Korner

I've been bashed into head on by people walking and texting in the mall. You try to swerve out of their way but it's not always successful.

I was amazed to see that this was a serious article/study. I expected this to be an Onion story.

After the implant you will be able to drive, walk, run, take a bath, engage in sexual encounters and at the same time send and receive insulting comments from USA Today readers.

For years, I have been trying to make people aware of this hazard.

Turn your units off


Shill Section

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read a free excerpt here.

His first novel The Foolchild Invention is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.